


Regina

by pineapple_kiddo



Category: N/A - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 00:52:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18510583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapple_kiddo/pseuds/pineapple_kiddo
Summary: Just a story I wrote for a project. Hope y'all enjoy.





	Regina

As Tyler logged onto his computer in the dead of night, he thought of what might happen if  
someone walked in. He laughed humorlessly and pressed on. He knew that no one would walk in. He wanted this, needed this. He needed the interaction he knew only the Internet could give him. Tyler types in his passcode with ease and suddenly the familiar interface springs to life.

“Finally…” Tyler mutters to himself, scrolling through. There were various missed messages, all from chats he was roped into over and over. Tyler got to work responding from time to time, and working like a machine. He sent a “Hey” to one, and “Hello” to another. In Tyler’s mind, these were vastly different responses. One was formal, and the other was non-verbal. If Tyler had learned anything in French, it was that formal and non-formal were vastly different. This was his life. This was his bread and butter, he told himself. Clicking from tab to tab was oh so satisfying. Each click of the keys was like music to his ears. Tyler truly felt in his element, shielded from everything else in his life. Once that username popped up on his screen, with the familiar profile picture in tow, he knew that he was safe and sound. Tyler made sure to be secure with his information, a tidbit he picked up from the grueling and melancholy presentations the student body was shown. Tyler let his mind drift off for a moment to the beat of some new stream of music, when all of a sudden a new message dinged.  
The message read a simple “Heyo”, but these four letters meant a little bit of interest. Most people who sent something that was like this had something on your mind. Tyler raised an eyebrow as he saw that the message had come from a ‘Turner’n’H00ch’.  
He replied back, “Hello. Do I know you?”  
The reply piqued his interest. “Maybe. We might have talked a little in a chatroom about the season finale of the Simpsons.”  
He smiled. “Yeah, I remember that. It was an interesting conversation. You had said that Mr. Burns was shot by Smithers, despite the evidence against that.”  
The reply was as such: “Yeah, and I still stick by my guns. Got a problem?”  
It was a challenge, Tyler realized, and for the first time since he had first logged on to this Wild West of the Web, he felt a sense of wonder.  
“No, not at all. I just hope that you’re prepared to be dead wrong.” Tyler typed, and sent. A smiley face was sent in response.  
“Yeah, yeah. Keep laughing.” The response started. “Moving on, how was your day?”  
This was dangerous territory for Tyler, and he felt it in his gut. Anything personal was strictly off limits in his eyes. It was how they got you, apparently. Even though Tyler didn’t believe that anyone was out to get him, he knew that it was better to be safe than sorry.  
“I’m alright, day was boring. How about you?” Tyler responded simply.  
“It was about the same as you, I suppose. Got anything going on in life?” The response caught him off-guard.  
After hesitating, Tyler sent back, “What do you mean?”  
“Like, friends and such. Maybe you’re a music nerd and you have a concert or something.” The response made him breathe easy again.  
“Heh, not really. Real life friends are hard to come by when you’re me. I like music, but I can’t play anything to save my life.”  
“Aw, that’s too bad :(. Well, chin up. Maybe there’s a lucky someone waiting for you to come along.” The response got a laugh out of Tyler.  
“Yeah, maybe. I doubt it, but thanks for the self-esteem, Turner’N’H00ch.” Tyler replies.  
“My name is Regina, you nerd. Don’t feel like you have to type out my username all the time.” The response shook Tyler for the second time.  
“Regina…” He mutters, before typing. “Huh. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Regina.”  
“So what’s your name? Sorry for asking. I just don’t wanna type out your username over and over, Drag00n-Panzer. Lol.”  
Tyler sees the question and feels everything else in his world melt away. On one hand, he doesn’t want to seem like a creep and not say his name. He’s afraid of losing a possible friend, but at the same time… this seems like the first step. He shivers, unsure if it’s from the cold air outside, or just his own superstitions.  
“My name’s Bonnie.” Tyler eventually types, and clicks send before he can think about it again. He begins to type out a “lol, jk”, but for some reason, he leaves it.  
Regina responds. “It’s good to meet you, Bonnie! Well, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later!”  
Tyler responds with an awkward “See ya”, before logging off.  
“What did I just do…” Tyler mutters. “God, I’m an idiot….” He begins, but doesn’t finish his thought. The night takes him before then. 

As Tyler wakes up the next morning, he remembers the short but intriguing conversation with Regina. In hindsight, the conversation was rather bland. However, it left Tyler completely enraptured with the person on the other side. Then it dawns on him that school is upon him. Tyler groans and slides out of bed. He nearly falls over the large amount of clothes and cords covering his floor, and gets dressed.  
As Tyler heads downstairs, he sees the ruined home he will leave behind in a few months time. His mother, shriveled up on the couch and surrounded by empty bottles. Dirty dishes lining the countertops and making the kitchen a biohazard. A broken photo frame containing a snapshot of time long past. He sighs and begins to clean away the mess his mother made the night before. As he finishes cleaning the dishes, he hears her stir.  
“Jamie? Is that you…?” Hearing the name of his brother makes Tyler wince. Jamie was long-gone, off in Oregon. He sent money home, but all it did was fuel his mother’s coping mechanism. Rather than respond to his mother, Tyler says nothing, puts a blanket over her, and heads out the door. 

The drive to school is uneventful, and when he pulls into the parking lot the headphones come out. They shield his ears from everything negative, and they create a safety blanket only rivaled by his computer. The day speeds by, with the materials finished easily and quietly. Every minute on the drive home feels like agony as the thought of Regina floods his mind. He rushes upstairs and logs on, checking to see if there were new messages.  
“Yes!” Tyler feels a sense of elation that he hasn’t felt since things got bad downstairs. It’s a simple “Hello!”, but the exclamation mark makes Tyler feel a great deal of elation. He instantly sends a reply, an equally excited “Hey!”  
R: “How are you?”  
T: “I’m okay, and you?”  
R: “The day was kinda boring again… but at least I get to talk to you!”  
The end part makes Tyler’s heart soar. He knows that this is a complete stranger on the Internet, but to see that someone values talking to him is exhilarating to him.  
T: “Aw, thanks! I really like talking to you, too!”  
The response was a smiling face.  
R: “Hehe, anyway… so why are you on this website?”  
T: “I just wanted to talk to people, really. I like doing it on here. It’s a safe place, you know?”  
R: “I get that. You feel invincible, right?”  
T: “Yeah, and it’s an escape from some of the garbage in my life.”  
R: I feel that. So… got any plans for tonight, or are you just gonna talk with little old me?”  
Tyler smiles to himself.  
T: “Well, when you put it like that...lol, sure.”  
R: “Yay! So what do you want to talk about?”  
And on it went. Tyler and Regina talked for hours on end, about everything from pop culture to history and everything in between. There was a gnawing feeling in Tyler’s gut that this was all wrong, that something was amiss. That feeling was snubbed. He had finally found someone who likes talking to him. This day was getting better and better in his eyes. And so it went, for days on end. They would talk all night long, leaving Tyler completely ragged. However, he would have to keep up the Bonnie facade constantly, eventually constructing a fake story to some degree. Mind you, most of it was still Tyler. There was just a little fibbing here and there, mainly about his social life.

Tyler woke up more groggy than before, tangled in his sheets after crashing hard during his texting session with Regina.  
“Ugh… oh no.” He suddenly realized that the homework due that morning was sitting on his desk. He swore under his breath and quickly scribbled out the answers before rushing downstairs and driving off. His mother didn’t open her eyes on the couch as he thundered down the stairs.  
School was an ordeal, due to his lack of sleep. Tyler felt himself drift off during class and missed quite a bit of lessons. People stared and whispered about how weird he was. Tyler knew they were, even if he couldn't hear them. He found himself taking the long way to classes to avoid seeing his classmates, eating outside of the cafeteria, and just slogging through the day. When he got home, all he could think about was Regina. They continued to talk for hours, and soon Tyler felt the gnawing feeling about the Bonnie lie fade away. He rationalized that soon it would fade away and nothing would come of it. Nothing else mattered, he thought. Just Regina.

He learned a lot about Regina. She was a high school student, a senior. Her favorite movie, funnily enough, was Turner and Hooch. She lived with her grandparents most of the time, since her parents were busy with travelling. She had a decent friend group, but nothing like “Bonnie”. They both confided their issues in each other, Tyler with his broken home and Regina with her mental health issues and oppressive household. Tyler even felt a bit of love blooming from their friendship, but that feeling also led back to the gnawing feeling of guilt that was growing in his gut. So he just shut it out and went back to talking with her like nothing was amiss.  
He forgot his mom existed most of the time, just drinking away on the couch. His teachers tried to bring his slipping grades to his attention, but he would only blink and nod. Nothing would change, and the finality of it all came when he just stopped showing up to school. Tyler, mind addled from a lack of sleep, decided to just stay home and wait until Regina got up. This proved to be more agonizing than school, with each minute feeling like days and Tyler’s paranoia of Regina finding out about the lie growing with each second that he was not talking to her. And so this continued, the vicious cycle growing and growing until it got to be too large to contain. The gnawing feeling about the lie had gotten too large, and Tyler had decided enough was enough. He felt that he had known Regina all his life, despite it had only been a couple of months. So when he saw that she had not responded first, he decided to go for it.  
T: “Hey. Can I talk to you about something?”  
R: “Of course! What’s up?”  
T: “I’m really sorry… my name isn’t Bonnie. I’m a guy named Tyler… I don’t even know why I said my name was Bonnie. Maybe it was because I was wary about giving out personal information to someone who at the time was a total stranger, or maybe I was just curious to see how far I could go… either way it was wrong. I’m a total shut-in, and over the months we have talked my life has slowly come to revolve around you. Regina, you… you’re everything to me. I just felt terrible lying to you. I hope that you can forgive me at some point.”  
After this, radio silence for what seemed like an eternity. The only noise Tyler could hear was the occasional coughing fit of his mother downstairs mixing with the blaring of the Home Shopping Network. Then it registered that Regina had seen the message, and everything truly stopped.  
“Oh god… what if she hates me?” Tyler begins to breathe faster and faster, feeling his pulse quicken.  
Then the fateful bell rings on the computer.  
R: “Hm. Well, I’m sorry for trusting you. This really hurts, ‘Bonnie.’ It hurts way more than you would know. Look, I get that at the beginning I was just some weirdo online. But instead of giving me a fake name and leading me on, you could have just given me a nickname or something! I mean, seriously!! I’m sorry if I’m blowing this out of proportion, but I trusted you. You were my best friend… I may have even begun to have a thing for you. But now I don’t know what I can trust. I don’t know if you’re just lying to me again, leading me on to test me. Well, I’m done… just give me some space to calm down. I can’t… I just can’t right now.  
Tyler read this, and felt it all stop. Everything, from the whir of his fan to the sound of his breathing, and everything in between. His best friend, his ONLY friend… gone. Before he can respond, Regina logs off. He tries to type a response, but a message pops up.  
Automated Response: You cannot send messages to Turner’n’H00ch anymore.  
Tyler felt his world shatter into glass shards.  
“No…. nonononono…. This can’t be happening…” His voice is hoarse with ragged emotion as the full situation revealed himself. He carefully turns his computer off with a single shaking finger, and then turns around to slam his fist through the thin walls of his room.  
He feels the crunch of drywall, and the slicing of his skin as his fist rams into a nail. For a second, this pain is pleasurable, almost like penance for the sin he committed. Tyler then howls like a feral animal, and falls from his chair into the wasteland of his room. The tears begin to flow freely from his eyes, and he curls up much like how his mother curls up on the couch. He sobs and howls and cries while his hand pulses with pain and his ears ring wildly. Everything hurts, and his chest feels like it had caved in. Tyler slowly pulls himself up, and feels all emotion fade away from his mind. Nothing mattered anymore in his emotion-addled mind.  
He stumbled downstairs, letting the blood flow freely from his pulsing hand. He sees his mother, still sitting in the same spot as always. Tyler almost laughs, and walks out the front door, hearing the familiar creak scream out. Tyler just keeps walking, aimlessly swaying to and fro as the night sky buzzes on around him. He feels the emotion slowly surge up again, and finally he collapses on a park bench. The tears flow freely once more, and the last thought he has is one word before the night takes him. The same word that had taken over his life for the past three months. The word that caused him to not look over his mother, the word that caused him to let everything else go. The word that now seems like a curse. The word that he cannot utter without feeling a surge of emotion not felt by him in a long time.

Regina.


End file.
